The current minimum wage is $10.95 an hour for these workers, who are not civil servants but work for the federal government through contracting firms.
Biden is expected to formally recognize the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War One as an act of genocide, but the statement made no mention of the issue.
The three main indexes on Wall Street also fell on reports that Biden planned to raise income taxes on the wealthy, a proposal some said would be hard to pass in Congress.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, another early ally of Biden, boosted ambitions of his energy-exporting country to reductions of 40-45 percent below 2005 levels, compared with an earlier target of 30 percent.
The announcement would coincide with the final day of Biden's two-day virtual Earth Day summit with some 40 leaders, in which he hopes to rally the world on climate change and unveil more ambitious US commitments.
Biden, though, has tried to convince the Black community that he doesn't just consider them political chess pieces -- that he actually cares about their unique plight.
In nationally televised remarks, Biden also called for "confronting head on systemic racism and the racial disparities that exist in policing and our criminal justice system."